


Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul One-shots.

by fadesfanfic



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-09 03:16:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18908413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadesfanfic/pseuds/fadesfanfic
Summary: Two one-shots for character emotions in the Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul plotline.#1: Damian deals with the betrayal he feels after he learns his entire life was a lie, and he was only intended to be his grandfather's puppet. Also, ping pong lessons.#2: Talia confronts her father after the failed attempt to possess her son's body.





	1. Legacy & Lies

**Author's Note:**

> Semi a follow up to Batman and Son Rewrite, so if there are some quotes that aren't from the comics, that's where they're from.

Damian Al Ghul is having a hard time conceptualizing this as something other than another mission.

Mother and he are on the run from the League of Shadows. Damian’s grandfather - the man to whom he’d dedicated his entire life impressing - wants to possess Damian’s body. Damian feels like a joke. His entire life he’d been told that he’d be the next Ra’s Al Ghul, be his heir, carry on for him in his absence should he fall. But it was just a hoax. The only purpose Grandfather saw in him was as a vessel.

At least Mother seems to have been unaware of Grandfather’s plans. Damian doesn’t know what he’d do if she was in on it. Mother’s been the most consistent person in his life - always more present than Grandfather, always more human. Less of a deified demon whom you could never disappoint, more of a consistent trainer, and well, a… mother.

She’s scared, he can tell. She’s been scared since the encounter with Father, near Gibraltar. Every time they were in the presence of the rest of the League, Damian could see her scanning the exits and entrances, doing a headcount on how many assassins were around them.  

It’d seemed like paranoia, but it turned out she was right. 

And yet, he can’t help but thinking of this as another mission. He has to be on the run from the people he trained with, dodging security cameras or evading, killing, or paying off witnesses. It seems half like what you’d do to prepare for an assassination mission, and when it’s all over, Grandfather will be there in his throne to tell Damian he did well.

The thought makes his stomach hurt. 

The two of them - he and Mother - are currently on a cargo ship traveling north, away from Australia. Damian hadn’t liked the idea - it’s so slow it will take them a couple days to get to a good stop. But Mother said it was important - the League would be checking airports. With this, the League can lose track of them while they’re traveling - six days later and they won’t know where to look, they’ll have assumed the trail went cold.

At first, Mother had snuck the two of them onto the cargo ship. After they were far enough from the shore that she was sure they wouldn’t be thrown out, she devised a lie to the captain to explain their presence. She’d said she and her son were on the run from men to whom her husband owed money - and she’d pay handsomely if they can drop them off at the next port. Damian didn’t like the lie - it involved her begging. It’s unbecoming of an Al Ghul to beg. Mother explained that it was easier this way - if the crew believes them to be mere civilians, a helpless woman and her helpless ten-year-old son, they won’t be as suspicious as if she’d just threatened them, and no one will see a bunch of bodies when they arrive, as they would if they’d just killed them. Damian said he knew that. He’s not stupid. He still doesn’t like it. 

The crew for the most part has stayed away from Damian. Damian’s fine with that. He’s pretty sure Mother expects him to act like a normal ten-year-old civilian here, and he has no idea how to do that. His (he grimaces against the word)  _ incapacity  _ to do that was made clear in his short time at Father’s. Father had encouraged Damian in all the nonviolent talents he’d seen - namely, painting and helping with the company - yet never permitted him to demonstrate his prowess in personal combat. He’d said to enjoy being ten. Then he’d taken him with him on a mission to find Mother, because Damian was too dangerous to be left alone. Damian felt like he was being ordered to be two things at once: a precocious child and an obedient soldier. He never figured out which one Father wanted. They’d gotten separated in the chaos, and Damian wasn’t sure he’d ever see his father again. He wasn’t sure his father would  _ want  _ to see him again, after how horrified he was at his attempted murder of Drake. 

He’d tried to ask Mother about it, if he made a mistake, but he could never quite get the words out. He was too ashamed to say so, too worried she’d look at him like Father did even though she’d told him throughout his training never to give mercy to nor to demonstrate weakness before enemies. As far as he knows, though, she doesn’t consider the rest of Father’s people rivals or enemies. 

He does, however, ask her why Father had framed things the way he had. Why Father had demanded Damian tell him what Mother  _ did  _ to him. 

Mother is silent for a long while. They’re in a cabin of the cargo ship - fortunately, they were not all full. It’s more comfortable than Damian had expected - a twin-sized bed and a couch are available. It is now that Mother sits on the couch, not answering.

Damian repeats the question. He’s not sure she heard him, given how long she’s been quiet.

“Mother, why did Father want to know what you  _ did  _ to me?”

Mother sighs heavily. “That’s complicated, Damian.”

“It’s a good thing I’m smart enough to understand then,” Damian says a little pointedly. 

“Maybe I’m not smart enough to explain it, then,” Mother says with a slight smile, so Damian knows she’s joking. However, her demeanor quickly becomes serious again. “Your father is very different than most of the people you’ll see in the League. It’s part of what attracted me to him in the first place.”

Damian grunts.

Mother continues, “Your father was expecting you to have a different childhood. The place he lives, outside the League of shadows, is… different.”

“You mean weak and corrupt.” The worlds feel like they fall flat as he says them, though. It’s not  _ him _ saying it, he realizes, it’s Grandfather. The same thing he’s told him his entire life, the same reason why the League should be killing people or trying to take control of the world. Why  _ his  _ destiny would be to tame the world, as Mother had said. And now he wonders how much of that she believed, or how much she was merely parroting Grandfather’s views. Telling him lies. Laughing at him. 

Damian takes a couple steps away from Mother. Suddenly, the cabin feels to small. But he doesn’t leave yet. He still wants his answer.

Mother frowns slightly as he backs up, but doesn’t stop him. “Maybe,” she says. “But your father saw value in protecting that weakness. As he would’ve protected you.”

Damian clenches his hands in fists. He doesn’t like this, doesn’t like how Mother is referring to a childhood he never had with a man that, as far as he can tell, doesn’t want anything to do with him. 

“I don’t need protection,” Damian says. He’s hating how Mother sounds right now, how soft, how indecisive. It’s not how she  _ should  _ sound. 

“I’m your mother, Damian. I’ll always keep you safe,” Mother says. 

Damian shakes his head and leaves the room. He’s both saddened and relieved to not hear Mother’s footsteps following him. He doesn’t want to talk to her - she’s been acting strange since he got back from Father’s - but he does want her to explain things so they’ll make sense again. If that’s even possible with Grandfather trying to possess him.

Damian could  _ really  _ use getting his excess energy out in a sparring or combat situation, but the only person on the boat he’d be allowed to fight is Mother, and he’s not happy with her. But he’s not allowed to fight civilians - mother wants them to look helpless, as she said - and even if he were, he doubts the crewmembers here would be strong enough for the match to get his energy out. 

Instead, he decides to go to the small fitness room he’d seen when they were being shown around. He supposes it makes sense - even civilians would want to keep their bodies in shape while being stuck in ocean for who knows how long. The room is fairly small, taken up mostly be a table that looks like a miniaturized tennis court, but there’s still a punching bag, stationary exercise bike, and some machine he doesn’t recognize. 

Currently, two men are in the room. Both are tall and white, though one’s pretty young, brown haired, and lean, and the other’s closer to middle aged, balding, with a big gut. Damian thinks he remembers their professions - cook for the young one, second engineer for the old one - but he never caught their names.

The cook is using the stationary bike and the engineer is collecting paddles together. “You play table tennis?” he asks Damian when he sees him come in.

Damian shakes his head. 

The engineer points out the cook with a thumb. “Shame. Eric’s sick of being trounced, so he won’t play me anymore.”

“If  _ I  _ were beaten in battle, I wouldn’t surrender - I’d keep trying until I won,” Damian says. He cringes a little internally as  _ in battle _ slips out of his mouth - he’s supposed to be a civilian. But the crew just seems to think it’s funny.

The engineer laughs. “ _ This  _ kid gets it.” He slides Damian a paddle. “Here, I’ll teach you how to play.”

Damian frowns, but decides to allow himself the distraction. He swings the paddle through the air, testing its weight.

“Kid, you don’t need to take someone’s  _ head _ off,” the engineer says. He takes a hollow white ball out of his pocket and bounces it off the paddle gently. “See?”

Damian nods. The weight of the paddle still feels off. It feels like a toy. He’d prefer an exercise such as this with his sword - in fact, he  _ had  _ had exercises such as these in the past - blocking projectiles with his sword to improve reflexes or catching arrows with his hands. 

The engineer explains the game and his name (David) and sets out about playing. Damian misses a  _ lot  _ in the beginning of the game - the objective is for the ball to hit the opponent’s court and then bounce off, and Damian keeps accidently just shooting the ball straight past the opponent, to the wall behind him. It hits Eric a couple times to which Eric protests (“ow!”). 

The end of the game goes much better for Damian, however. He becomes used to the objective - surgical  _ precision  _ about deflecting the ball where it’s supposed to go. The game ends in David’s favor and he says, “You have  _ great  _ hand-eye coordination. But you got off to a rough start. It’s fine.”

Damian shakes his head. Losing is never fine. He won’t allow himself to be defeated!

“Again,” Damian says. 

David nods eagerly, clearly just glad to have a worthy opponent.

“Your waste of an evening, kid,” Eric says from his bike.

Damian snorts. He’s confident that once he has this down, he’ll be victorious. It’s too based on physical reaction timing, and he is nearly perfect in every way in that respect. 

One the second game, he has a much better hang of it than the first. He no longer whacks the ball into Eric (to Eric’s relief), and he’s gotten the hang of the limited reach of the table tennis paddle - a limited reach that is compensated for by it’s increased width, and therefore surface area. Only once or twice does he lose the point by instinctively grabbing the ball as it comes at him, from his arrow reflexes. And he can see his enemy tiring as the game drags on. Meanwhile, Damian is in top physical condition. 

The game ends in Damian’s favor this time. Damian smiles victoriously, and Eric says, “The king is dethroned!” cheering him on. It feels weird - he barely knows this man - but he still basks in the praise.

“I told you I would never concede defeat,” Damian says to David.

David smiles. Why is he happy? He lost! He should be chagrined! “Good thing you’re such a quick learner, then,” he says. 

Damian is still frowning, completely off guard by the amiable reaction of his opponent.

“Yes,” he says slowly as he attempts to figure out the rules of this interaction. “I am an exceptionally quick learner.”

Partially at ease by how calm the civilians are responding to him - he is managing them amazingly, he thinks to himself - Damian moves on to the punching bag. He knows he’s not  _ supposed _ to be an assassin in front of these people, so he won’t do anything too impressive. He just starts with a basic punch - the first thing he learned when he could stand. Hand chambered at the ribs, aims his hand towards the enemy’s solar plexus, extends it forward palm up and rotates over right before impact for increased reach - something basic enough he could do it in his sleep. He exhales with the blow and the bag swings back a little with impact, but he’s hardly trying to knock it off it’s chain. 

That felt good. He repeats the move, with the other hand.

Nothing suspicious here.

Another similarly basic technique, a palm-heel strike, this time to an imaginary enemy’s nose. He imagines the crunch of bone under his hand and the way they would recoil backwards. He punches them again with a hook to the imaginary kidneys. Grabs the bag and knees it. Imagines the bag were his nemesis, Drake -  _ If you think murder is acceptable, you’re never going to be able to do my job _ . He elbows it while it’s near him, imagining it were Father -  _ What makes you think I’ll let you stay here long enough to try again? _ He follows up with what  _ would  _ be an elbow to an opponent's teeth, knocking them out and brutalizing them. This time, Grandfather -  _ I am yours  _ and  _ how  _ could Damian have been so  _ stupid _ ? Thinking he wasn’t being conditioned to be a puppet this entire time! That was the  _ oath  _ that Grandfather made him say. He was never a person to him, he was an object! 

Damian punches the bag harder, and he knows he’s losing control but can’t  _ help _ it. He knows it’s stupid. It’s not Grandfather. All he’s doing is blowing his and Mother’s cover and he hopes that none of the civilians try to touch him in this state because he’s not entirely sure he would be able to stop himself from breaking their arms - or worse. 

_ I never realized how dangerous you were _ \- Father.

Grandfather -  _ Every day, Damian, your sharpness grows keener, and you make me a little prouder. _

_ Thank you, Grandfather. I am yours. _

“Damian?” Mother’s voice, and for a moment, Damian thinks he’s still stuck in the past remembering every single lie that people told him. 

_ You are the future. _ The thing she always told him.  _ Together we will build an everlasting kingdom - _

What a joke.

“Damian,” Mother says again, this time closer to him.

Damian feels himself wilt. He’s tired. More tired than he’s ever been before, more tired than in the Year of Blood when he spent all day everyday proving himself to his Grandfather for three hundred and sixty-five days straight, because at least he knew what his purpose was during that. It seemed nonsensical or bloody or pointless, but he could think of his family and find the strength to keep going. 

Mother touches his shoulder, somehow in the room, and when he doesn’t jerk away, she wraps her arms around him.

The world seems to come back into focus, David and Eric are kind of just staring at him, against the wall.

“We didn’t do anything, Miss,” David says. Damian doesn’t know why. Do they think that  _ they  _ could have provoked this response in him? Egotistical. Nonsensical. They’re nothing. Less than nothing.

“I know,” Mother says to them, and she strokes Damian’s hair. Damian knows he should step away, he should reassert his strength and the fact that he doesn’t need to rely on anyone. That he’s the perfect soldier and perfect heir to the Al Ghul Dynasty.

But he doesn’t. He can’t. 

Damian focuses on calming his breathing, because if he’s going to be freaking out and useless, he’s at least not going to cry. He hasn’t cried since the Year of Blood. Since he found that one animal that wouldn’t fight him, and he didn’t even know why it happened back then.

“It’s okay,” Mother says. “I’m here, Damian.”

Damian now feels like he’s regained enough strength to step back away from her, so he does. Mother’s still bent over, like she was when she was hugging him, and staring straight through him.

“I know,” Damian says. He brushes off his shirt as if he can brush off the shame of his most recent emotional outburst. No wonder Grandfather saw nothing in him but a vessel. “I know, Mother. I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?” she asks. 

Damian shakes his head. He doesn’t know how to explain it. Questions pop to his mind:  _ Do you think Grandfather ever loved me? Do you miss your Father? Where can we possibly go from here?  _ but he doesn’t permit himself to ask them. Instead, he says, “Let’s go back to the room and prepare for the next attack.”


	2. The Foolish Dreamer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Talia comes home to her father, who tried to destroy her son.

It’s been a week since Batman, his allies, and Talia have foiled her father’s attempt to possess her son, but Talia Al Ghul still cannot prevent herself from looking over her shoulder for League of Shadows members, coming to drag her and Damian back. It’s Father, she thinks. He won’t let them be free of him. He will never let them be free. Before she had Damian, it’d been League of Shadows business dragging her back when she was trying to study at university. Or his demands that she choose between Batman and him. After Damian’s birth, it’d been much easier. Damian was being groomed to be the next Ra’s Al Ghul, and any attempt to run would both deny him his destiny and endanger them both. All the easier to pretend it was just what she wanted this entire time. After all, it’s not a prison if you want to be there, right? She’d never have to wonder if she’d betrayed the foolish dreamer she used to be if she could make herself in to the weapon Ra’s Al Ghul required.

    A few days ago, he had reached out to her. She found him and Ubu in the apartment where she and Damian were staying. Father was casually leaning against the counter in his son Dusan's body - the naive bastard had given it up for a father who never loved him. Father in Dusan's body was smiling as he waited.

    “Talia,” he said. Just that one word, just her name.

    Talia regretted not taking her sword out with her in public. It was in its sheath, across the room - behind Ubu. “Father,” she said. She’s unwilling to start an attack right now, not when she was outnumbered and weaponless. “Whatever you’re here for, you won’t get.”

    “I am not here to _get_ something, but to give it,” Father said, spreading his hands a little, in a gesture of charity. “Forgiveness.”

    “Forgiveness?” Talia couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice, even though it might have escalated the situation. “You think I’m going to _forgive_ you? You tried to destroy my son -- your _grandson_ ! And you think I’d _forgive_ you?”

Father chuckled disconcertingly. “You misunderstand. _I_ am offering to forgive _you_ , my darling daughter. I always have. Despite your _numerous_ betrayals.”

Talia tested the waters, walking past Ubu and seeing if he’d stop her. He moved towards her, like he intended to, but Father raised a hand and stopped him.

Talia now was nearer to her sword.

“So let me get this straight,” she said, turning back to face Father. “You’re magnanimously offering to _forgive_ me for saving my son?”

Father’s slight smile dropped, his demeanor chilled.

“What, because we’re _family_?” she asked.

Father stepped towards her, reaching a hand to her face. She smacked it down. Ubu stirred in the background.

“We _are_ family.”

“I have _never_ been your daughter,” Talia said. She didn’t remember deciding to say it, but it came out anyway. She grabbed her sword and withdrew it from its sheath in one motion, leaving it pointed straight at his face. “I have _never_ been anything more to you than a womb for your perfect heir, and Damian has _never_ been anything more to you than an empty vessel. And now _you’re_ willing to forgive _me_?” She ended that with a bitter laugh.

Ra’s Al Ghul stepped forward and started to try to push the sword away. “Talia - ”

“No!” She pointed it back at him. “I’m tired of your manipulations. I’m tired of _buying it_ every time, like we can just turn over a new leaf and be a family. Leave before I make you leave.”

Ra’s looked between the sword and her face. His expression was growing angrier, the amiability he had now completely dissipated. “Do not start a fight you cannot win.”

Talia narrowed her eyes. Fortunately, she was too angry to be afraid. She let it show on her face. She let him know that she wouldn’t be cowed, wouldn’t be manipulated, wouldn’t be dragged back by some sense of duty to a man who had never felt any obligations to her. “Leave, Father. You have your immortality - the only thing that has ever mattered to you.”

He raised his head and straightened his collar, sure to maintain the appearance of being in control, being proud. But then he turned and left, Ubu following behind him. Talia had felt herself wilt the instant they were gone. Thirty-three years, she’s occasionally stood up to her father, saved her beloved, but she’d never told him that. She hadn’t been able to articulate it to herself before. She’d wanted to believe that he still loved her - or maybe he did, in his own way, but she’d wanted to believe that he loved her in a way she would find _meaningful_. She’d spent her entire life putting her family first, why couldn’t he have done it for once?

Immediately after that, she and Damian moved. She’d made sure to cover their tracks better, to prevent her father from finding them again. She didn’t tell Damian of the encounter she had - she didn’t want to worry him - but she could tell he was getting suspicious. He’d been a bit surly since they made it out of Nanda Parbat, since she’d knocked him out and prevented him from dying with Bruce and the others, who she’d learned later had _somehow_ made it out alive anyway. Damian had wanted to fight with them, despite the apparent hopelessness of the situation. It’s not as if she hadn’t wanted to as well, but getting Damian out was first priority. Damian refused to see that, though. And now -

Now, she comes home to an empty hotel room.

On the table is a letter, in Damian’s handwriting, addressed to her.

Talia sighs.

_Mother_ , the letter reads. There are some wrinkled spots on it as if tears had dried on it, and Talia thinks that that’s a bad sign. Damian hated to cry. It was unbecoming - he’d said, Ra’s Al Ghul had said, she’d said, pretty much everyone in his life had told him - for the heir to Ra’s Al Ghul to demonstrate such weakness. His entire life was dedicated to being strong. It was necessary, she thought. The strong survive, the weak perish, and she was going to make her son a survivor. Bruce hadn’t understood - his idealism, the same idealism that drew her to him, was the same thing that would have made their son too weak to fight off the numerous assassins coming for him. Or who knows, maybe if she were stronger, Damian wouldn’t have had to be. She blinks back tears. No matter what, it’s too late for regrets or wavering. The past is done. The future is the only thing to look towards.

She keeps reading.

 

_Mother, I apologize for my sudden departure. I did not want to do it in front of you, because you would have tried to convince me to stay. I cannot stay with you._

_I don’t know why you tried to remove me from the fight with Father and his allies in Nanda Parbat, and I don’t care. I’m tired of being ordered to be a child in one moment and a soldier in the next moment, and it’s hardly as if Father were the only one acting as such. Furthermore -_

 

There’s some scribbled out lines here, as if he had written it multiple times.

 

_Furthermore, being around you just reminds me of all of the broken promises with the League and my destiny. I know you were unaware of Dusan and_ _~~Grand~~_ _Ra’s’ plans, and I don’t blame you, but it doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. I know this is painful for you to read, so I wasn’t sure whether to tell you, but you deserve the truth._

_I’m going to Gotham. I don’t know if I’ll ask to see Father again or merely see what he’s doing, but I figure it’s time for me to find out about the other half of my heritage. You needn’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. I have my weapons and everything you taught me._

_Love_

_Your son_

_Damian Al Ghul-Wayne._

 

Talia can’t stop herself from crying now. It had always come easier to her, and gotten her in trouble if she showed weakness or sympathy before her father’s enemies. She wipes her face and sets the letter down.

Now, she thinks, she is truly alone.

She could track down Damian, of course, but she refuses to be the parent who is forcibly returning their child to them. She refuses to be another enemy, another captor. She refuses to be her father. And -

She looks around. Looks at her hotel room, her weapons, the amount of money she’s stashed away.

She is truly alone, but it doesn’t feel _bad_. It feels like a lot all at once, but just too much - too much good, having finally rid herself of the obligation she felt to her father. Too much bad, having lost Damian. Too much possibility, with the world in front of her and not a single person counting on her. If Bruce is aware of Damian’s presence, and Damian is with him, he’ll be safe. Safe from the demon’s head. Safe from the destiny she was forcing on him. She is - they are both - free.

She remembers, mostly. She remembers the past. Father - no, not Father, not ever again - _Ra’s Al Ghul_ ’s anger as he ordered her to hunt down Batman. To kill her only connection to the outside world, to assure that she would forever be with Ra’s and Damian would never grow into an enemy of the Al Ghuls.

What was it she had thought back then? It’s finally coming true, years later:

The foolish dreamer leaves this place, and will finally be free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To the best of my knowledge, an encounter like this never happened in canon (Ra's offering to ""forgive"" Talia), but I decided to test it out to a) get some character confrontation and b) see what some of their old dynamic was like but with the new character context, since the older comics I read with them had Ra's being like "oh you betrayed me for batman but its okay I forgive you" or something. A lot.
> 
> Obviously, this was inspired pretty heavily by The Batman Chronicles #8 (okay only obvious if you read it, but it quotes some from it).
> 
> This is kind of my attempt to mesh together pre-Morrison Talia with the canon that includes Damian (who only got introduced by Morrison). Morrison Talia is kind of villain-bally and obviously evil, pre-Morrison is a lot more morally grey. I also feel like Morrison Talia reads kind of very similar to Ra's, which is boring. 
> 
> My goal is hopefully that we get some from Talia's POV without justifying her raising Damian as an assassin, but we'll see how it comes across.


End file.
